> The bare minimum to compete would be native and web apps with good UX, competitive reviews and search, and better social features. Then you can fight the other half.

That does not seem like a winning recipe for competition. The bare minimum for competition would be some type of product differentiation that substantially differentiates the experience. Trying to compete on things like data, UX, or search doesn't seem like a winning formula to me.

I totally agree you have to differentiate and avoid replication as much as you can as a startup in general, but this conversation is mixing awkwardly two discussions now.

In context I was pushing back on the idea that cloning it to any competitive degree isn’t a mountain of a task.

But out of context of this thread, then yes as a startup your strategy should involve simpler, novel features that let you avoid some work. Of course if you're aiming to replace Yelp eventually, you do have to do that hard work and I doubt you'll really get far without doing it ultimately. Ratings/search is the product. You can simplify it in other ways though.

I mean just not being a corrupt mob like entity that exists to harass restaurant owners would be a plus to me. Solving the chicken and egg problem of actually getting momentum would be much harder. Then it is not only competing with yelp but also with Google Reviews which has the advantage of being in the search page itself.

I mean, you could clone Google in 3 weeks.